A decade with Environmental Chemistry

Environmental Chemistry was founded in 2004 by Dr Alison Green who recognised the need at that time for a journal focusing on the chemical processes, both natural and anthropogenically driven, influencing our environment. In 2010, I was given the opportunity to serve as Editor-in-Chief at Environmental Chemistry; as I pass the baton on to Professor Jamie Lead, I briefly reflect on some highlights from the last decade.

My time as an editor at Environmental Chemistry has been very rewarding, presenting me with a window into various intriguing aspects of environmental chemistry that I would not have otherwise experienced. It has been great working within our team of editors, all of whom are active scientists collectively covering a wide range of environmental research fields. The editors were able to draw on their expertise to coordinate Research Fronts on topical environmental issues and encourage top researchers to contribute to these issues. The result has been many fine collections of papers by leading researchers on diverse environmental topics, which over the years have included polyfluorinated compounds, nanoparticles – detection and toxicity, electrochemical methods in environmental research, synchrotron use in biogeochemistry, natural organohalogens, mineral-organic interactions, biogeochemistry of arsenic, antimony and tellurium, atmospheric aerosols, microplastics, and nanotechnology in agriculture.

There have been many outstanding papers published in the last decade in Environmental Chemistry, such as the lively discussion on recalcitrant organic matter in soil (Kleber 2010), an innovative model describing metal binding by humic substances (Tipping et al. 2011), mercury impacts on Arctic ecosystems (Douglas et al. 2012), our planet in the Anthropocene (Williams and Crutzen 2013), microplastics in surface waters (Faure et al. 2015), urban Paris (Dris et al. 2015) and soils (da Costa et al. 2019), neonicotinoid insecticides in the USA (Hladik and Kolpin 2016), and microplastics as carriers of agrochemicals (Rodriguez-Seijo et al. 2019).

Although topics in Environmental Chemistry often deal with the detrimental impact of humans on our planet, Environmental Chemistry also promotes investigations into more light-hearted aspects of chemical processes in the environment, such as the entertaining article in this issue reporting the chemical origin of line-dried laundry (Pugliese et al. 2020).

There have been several changes to Environmental Chemistry over the last 10 years, which have seen the journal move from being a printed subscription-based journal to an online hybrid journal with the option for open access. We have also seen the widespread use of social media to foster discussion of published research results, resulting in the science being more accessible to the public. Another significant change has been the large increase in submissions from China, reflecting the growing status of science in China and, in particular, the huge interest in the environmental sciences.

I thank my editorial colleagues for their professional input to Environmental Chemistry over the years; a big thank-you also to the journal managers (initially Dr Jenny Foster and now Dr Marisa Spiniello) and to the excellent production team based in Melbourne. Finally, I thank the authors who have published their research with us – at Environmental Chemistry, we understand the large amount of effort and time that authors invest in their research and in preparing a manuscript, and we take pride in the fact that the authors have entrusted us to publish their research results.

On leaving Environmental Chemistry, I welcome Jamie Lead as the new Editor-in-Chief, and I wish Jamie and the whole Environmental Chemistry team continuing success in publishing environmental science with a strong chemistry backbone.

Kevin Francesconi
Institute of Chemistry
University of Graz

The author declares no conflicts of interest.